Timeline: Key dates in the Second World War

Last updated at 16:58 04 May 2005

Waged across every inhabited continent, the Second World War was the most costly conflict in history, claiming the lives of around 57 million people.

It brought the previously unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust, nuclear weapons and the mass bombing of civilians, and left Europe locked in the Cold War, fractured between Soviet and Western spheres of influence.